By Vince Poscente

6:00 a.m. Hit off button on state-of-the-art, a.m. clock radio with flipping numbers
6:05 a.m. Notice bed-head makes afro look like Chinese Wok
6:10 a.m. Pull on terry shorts, tube socks, waffle shoes and happy-face T-shirt
6:30 a.m. Finally conquer afro with Pepsi terry towel headband. Go for jog
7:30 a.m. Shower. Notice Irish Spring feels tingly on nether regions (ad slogan takes on whole new meaning)
8:00 a.m. Fill out Day Timer “to-do” list

I sure miss that happy-face T-shirt. I miss a lot of things, actually. Reviewing a fully checked “to-do” list is something I miss the most. Do you miss it, too? I’m referring to how little time there seems to be to enjoy all the significant things in life. Here’s the interesting part: we could regain time if we just figured out what’s gone wrong.

I started thinking about this during my time at University of Alberta in the 80s. This was when I squeezed four years of education into six. While my friends were slugging through engineering or pre-med, I was orbiting my potential in recreation and leisure studies. I remember one class – Recreation 411. It was a course about future lifestyles. I learned (between naps) our new millennium society fueled by a digital revolution would bask in extraordinary recreation time. (How’s all that “extraordinary recreation time” working out so far?)

If that didn’t make you blow your Monster Energy Drink out your nose, consider the fact we’re getting less sleep and working more hours than we did when Journey ruled the airwaves and vente was just an Italian word. Our 24/7, Crackberry, more-faster-now world is pushing sleep aside as we ask one, burning question: “Is our time-starved world eating us alive or setting us free?”

That all depends on how you manage your time.

If we do it right, we will have more time for the significant things that make life a delicious treat. Managing with a to-do list is so, like, yesterday. Probably because it’s so, like, not possible. We’re at the front end of the Great Shakedown where time management must be redefined. To thrive in our more-with-less world, approach time management differently using the following three tactics.

Align

Align your time with your values. Best Buy reconsidered conventional 9 to 5 work-days and asked an important question: “Why not base the culture on results alone?” Hence the ROWE program: Results-Only Work Environment. If you wanted to take your dog to the vet at 11 a.m., knock yourself out. If you were required to have buyer trends comparative analysis done by tomorrow, you would happily do it at 11 p.m. because that was your choice. Best Buy’s initiatives reduced turnover and increased productivity in a monumental shift in alignment.

Patagonia demonstrates alignment by ensuring the environment is at the centre of their values. How employees manage their time is relative to the environment they are in. If surf’s up, then hired dudes and dudettes can be found at the beach. Work gets done when the swell is not so swell.

Old-school thinking splits your day into three categories. Many people still do this but suffer from guilt when one category overlaps with another. See Figure 1.

Instead, put your values at the centre of your day. Manage your time relative to your values. Figure 2 is an idea of what a Patagonia employee would do regarding their time. Let’s say you value challenge, making a difference and creativity. Make time-management decisions relative to your values. Let’s say you are on a family vacation and you have a choice to make. Take your family on the guided tour or a snorkeling dive in an open marine reserve. Challenge and making a difference in your families experience would dictate the more adventurous option. Time choices at work would follow the same principle.

Agile

Reacting vs. Responding

You have less time to be cerebral during real-time decisions. Remember when you had the luxury of doing the ol’ Benjamin Franklin positive and negative columns? This has changed to making snap decision on a conference call or e-mail exchange. Of course, important decisions need some time to assess, but it seems like most decisions are important today. To make healthy decisions, respond, don’t react.

Imagine skiing at more than 200 km/h. There is no decision-making time. Reacting on skis is equal to being on your heels the whole time. You never have control and it’s a matter of time before you crash. At play or work, it’s better to respond. Skiing at that speed requires balance and a readiness to blend with anything that comes your way. You’re neither on your toes or your heels. As you maintain balance, you have a multitude of options at any given moment.

Controlling vs. Blending

Ye old “to-do” lists were all about control. Control at speed is an oxymoron, but letting go at speed doesn’t mean abdicating any responsibility or accountability. Letting go is an ability to flow with a situation.

Let’s compare boxing with Aikido. I’ve never boxed before but it appears you get in a ring with a very angry guy sporting a flat nose and shiny shorts. In boxing you fight. You try to conserve energy, but when the attack comes you have no choice. You have to muscle through and hopefully win. By the end you are exhausted, bleeding and bruised.

Sound familiar? How often do you get to the end of your day and put your head on the pillow where it feels good just to not move?

Compare this to the martial art of Aikido. As a student of Aikido, I’ve learned that fighting an oncoming force is exhausting but blending with it is not. Picture the same attacker, but in Aikido you extend, blend with the direction of the force as you step off the line and guide the force to the ground. The outcome is fast, fluid and effortless.

Blend with the oncoming challenges that come your way and you conserve all sorts of time and energy. This means handling issues and action items in real time. Reserve tasks for budgeted periods of time and protect your free time by turning technology off. You, not technology, are the boss.

Speeding Up vs. Slowing Down

Responding and blending doesn’t happen by accident. To think that you can simply go fast without being prepared would be like a game of naked Twister. Eventually you’ll find yourself in a position that nobody wants to see – especially up close.

Being agile at speed requires that you are fully prepared. There is nothing fast about quality preparation. Spend your discretionary time carefully. Prepare for highest-level performance at game time, during a speech or in the middle of a negotiation. Getting up and winging it might have worked in the days of “ah jeeeeez” and “Meathead” but it doesn’t fly anymore.

Aerodynamic

Eliminating drag is the name of the game today due to two little numbers: 1s and 0s. Digital technology, combined with an insatiable desire for instant gratification, added to staying connected, combine for the perfect storm – interruptions.

A recent study found that people are interrupted every eight minutes. In another study, North Americans are interrupted, on average, 11 minutes into a task. To get back on task, the average is 30 minutes, if at all. Therefore, you and I are interrupted about 50 times per day.

Interruptions typically last for five minutes. If you do the math, that’s up to four hours or 50 per cent of every workday. But get this, researchers have found that 80 per cent of interruptions were rated as “little or no value.” We’re being sucked into the black hole of interruptions and we don’t even know it. If you add up all the little or no value interruptions, we have about three hours of every workday wasted. This means that workers waste about 744 hours every year on interruptions.

Interruptions are a drag. They are a drag on execution, efficiency, productivity and even mental health. Moreover, frequent e-mail interruptions cause a drop in IQ 2.5 times greater than the drop in IQ from smoking pot. You know it’s bad when HR breaks out the bong to increase productivity.

Take back your day and manage your interruptions. Block time for e-mails. Be diligent about who can interrupt you. Decide how and when you allow any interruptions. This is an era for new paradigms around how time is consumed. Only you can forge a new path.

If you align your values, are agile in real-time and eliminate drag, you can redefine how you manage your time. Before the digital revolution it was a simpler age. Technology that was meant to simplify can still meet that end. We must embrace the great shakedown and harness the seeming scarcity of time.

Vince Poscente HoF, CPAE, CSP, is a New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Speed and Canadian Olympian. He writes a weekly 70-second eBrief, Full Speed Ahead.

www.vinceposcente.com

This entry was posted on Friday, July 17th, 2009 at 1:56 pm and is filed under Summer 2009. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.